VOA慢速英语2019 科学家让水母游得更快（在线收听）

Researchers have used very small electronic devices to make jellyfish stronger and faster.

研究人员使用非常小的电子设备使水母变得更强壮、更快。 

The scientists say they developed these electronic jellyfish in the hopes of sending them to study and explore the worlds oceans.

科学家们说，他们改进了这些电子水母，希望把它们送到世界各地的海洋中去研究和探索。 

A report on the experiment was published in the journal Science Advances.

这项实验的报告发表在《科学进展》杂志上。 

Jellyfish are unusual creatures.They move through seawater by contracting,or reducing the size of, their muscles.

水母是一种不寻常的生物。它们通过收缩肌肉或缩小体积在海水中移动。 

For the experiment, the researchers put an electronic device, about 2 centimeters in length, inside a moon jellyfish, a common kind of jellyfish.

在实验中，研究人员将一个大约2厘米长的电子设备放入月亮水母(一种常见的水母)体内。 

The researchers said the device caused the creatures to move their bodies more often.They swam around three times faster than usual.These jellyfish use " 10 to 1000 times less external power per mass than other aquatic robots reported in literature ,"noted Nicole Xu and John Dabiri, the two lead authors of the report.

研究人员表示，该设备能让这些生物更频繁地活动身体。它们游得比平常快三倍。“这些水母每单位使用的外部能量比文献中其他水生机器人要低10到1000倍。”该报告的两位主要作者 尼科尔·徐和约翰·达比利 指出。

Jellyfish are known to release mucus at times when they are tense or feeling stressed.No such reaction was noted during the study.The jellyfish swam normally after the electronic device was removed,the researchers said.

众所周知，水母在感到紧张或压力大的时候会分泌粘液。目前在研究中还没有发现这样的反应。研究人员说，在移除电子设备后，水母可以正常游泳。

" Care is taken not to harm the jellyfish, " Dabiri explained.

达比利解释说：“实验中大家分外注意不伤害水母。” 

The next step will be to test ways to control where the jellyfish go.Another possible step: to develop small sensors that could take long-term measurements of ocean conditions, added Xu and Dabiri.

下一步将是测试控制水母去向的方法。另一个可能的研究方向是:开发可以长期测量海洋状况的小型传感器，徐和达比利补充道。

"Its very sci-fi futuristic ,"said Xu, a bioengineer at Stanford University in California."We could send these bionic jellyfish to different areas of the ocean to monitor signs of climate change or observe natural phenomena ."

“这是非常科幻的未来主义，”加州斯坦福大学的生物工程师徐说。“我们可以把这些仿生水母送到海洋的不同区域去监测气候变化的迹象或观察自然现象。”

One of the first goals will be deep dives, added Dabiri,who studies mechanical engineering and serves as a professor at the California Institute of Technology.Deep dives are important because of a major gap in human understanding of the deep oceans.

达比利补充说，首要的目标之一将是深潜。达比利是加州理工学院教授，机械工程专业研究学者。深海潜水很重要，因为人类对深海的认识有很大的差距。

"Basically, wed release the bionic jellyfish at the surface,have it swim down to increasing depths,and see just how far we can get it to go down into the ocean and still make it back to the surface with data ,"he said.

他说:“基本上，我们在海面上释放这种仿生水母，让它游到越来越深的地方，然后看看我们能让它潜到多深的海洋，同时还能把数据传回海面。”

Jellyfish have existed for over 500 million years,and over that time,their body structure has remained largely unchanged, said Xu."So its interesting to figure out what makes them so special and how we can learn from them."

水母已经存在了5亿多年，在这漫长的岁月里，他们的身体结构基本保持不变，徐说。“所以弄清楚是什么让它们如此特别，以及我们能从它们身上学到什么是很有趣的。”

She added, "Because we use animals with natural swimming motions,the hope is that they wont disturb the environment in the same way that a submarine might,so we can expand the types of environments we can monitor. "

她补充说，“因为我们使用的是有自然游泳动作的动物，希望它们不会像潜水艇那样干扰环境，这样我们就可以增加我们可以监控的环境类型。”